Subject Area: Folklore & Folk Studies

Lewis, Huw Aled2007 0-7734-5323-7 288 pagesThis ground-breaking book makes an invaluable contribution to scholarship by advancing knowledge and understanding of Spanish oral narrative and related areas of research. Added to the analysis of the Spanish folktale genre and the presentation of the history of research, this work also makes available to the English-speaking reader, for the first time, fifteen folktales that do not appear in any other collection. The result is a study that will certainly be an important point of reference and comparison for scholars of European folklore and cultural studies.

Nakahara, Gladys Emiko2003 0-7734-6626-6 368 pagesDespite Ryôjinhishô’s monumental importance in classical Japanese literature, this work has never been translated into English in its entirety before. Along with the complete English translation, with annotations and transcriptions, this study also contains a discussion imayô and its place in the continuity of the genre of Japanese songs from antiquity to the time of imayô. The songs were originally compiled by the retired Emperor Go-Sirakawa (1127-1292).

Beaupre, Charles P.2007 0-7734-5302-4 316 pagesThe Aboriginal Peoples of Taiwan have a rich and varied cultural heritage. Historically, there was no written form of their native languages. Cultural knowledge and values within the different tribal groups was often transmitted through folk tales. These folk tales offer a valuable window into the rich cultural history of the Aboriginal Peoples of Taiwan. Furthermore, the tales contain fundamental values that aim to teach younger members a sense of right and wrong. It is one important way the tribal groups have been able to keep their traditions and ways of thinking alive. To this day, these tales serve as a crucial way of passing heritage and values to the younger generations of indigenous tribal members.

Many of the folk tales of the indigenous peoples in Taiwan have an intimate relationship with nature. As such, the aboriginal folk tales of these peoples represent an important element of their ‘native’ literatures, and are being increasingly appreciated as forming an essential part of Taiwan’s national culture. This book presents essential elements of this indigenous literature through selected folk tales, featuring animals, heroes, and ordinary people having heroic experiences. This book contains 42 black and white photographs.

Pointer, Fritz2012 0-7734-4087-9 328 pagesProfessor Pointer is the first person to offer an English translation of the Epic of Kambili, an African heroic myth. The book is careful to point out that this text deserves to be read by myth scholars and shows that the literary tradition of epic myth-telling extends to Africa through its oral folklore. The author argues that the story should be treated as an epic myth that was pieced together by different authors over several centuries, which may or may not have been the result of observing real events. It may have been an imaginative narrative representing cultural norms with verbal symbolism, thereby putting it in a different tradition to the European epics, while also showing similar conventions of genre.

Smith, Maria T.2007 0-7734-5528-0 160 pagesThis study, focusing on select novels by women writers of the African Diaspora, illustrates that a surprising degree of commonality exists among works with obvious geographical, cultural, and linguistics differences – an affirmation of the philosophical essence of the Vodun religion as an antidote to Western spiritual and cultural moribundity. A close reading Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Pluie et Vent sur Telumée Miracle, and Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow, demonstrates the way in which these works allude to the Vodun pantheon and ancestor veneration in order to valorize a worldview that recognizes the interconnectedness of all living things, visible and invisible. This is accomplished by locating each novel within its socio-political context and developing African diasporic literary tradition wherein African-derived beliefs have become sources of cultural resistance. After this reconstruction, the author is able to explicate the representation and function of Vodun as it is employed by each of the authors under consideration.

Wintersteen, Benjamin2010 0-7734-3688-X 180 pagesThis book examines the religious, mythological and performance elements of the traditional Afro-Caribbean street festival. Using the theories of performance, political economy and symbolic analysis, this work elucidates how elements of African, European and South American cultures interact to produce a unique understanding of the colonial and post-colonial experience.

French, Laurence Armand2008 0-7734-5106-4 212 pagesThis oral history complements earlier works conducted during the Great Depression through the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP). The work covers not only covers the depression-era but also sentiments on World War II and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and is unique in its in that the oral histories portray a long-isolated region of the South – Appalachia and its unique racial subcultures, Cherokee Indians, Mountain Whites and Local Blacks.

Mellor, Scott A.2008 0-7734-4856-X 348 pagesThis work investigates the syntax of ten poems from the Poetic Edda, a medieval Icelandic text, offering data that reveals some of the composition processes and the remnants of the oral tradition from which poetry came. This work demonstrates that the Icelandic poet not only employed verbatim and variable formulae when composing, but also that the structure of the half-lines are formulaic and that their semantic function aids a poet in composition.

Onyile, Onyile Bassey2007 0-7734-5334-2 264 pagesEkpu Oro ancestral figures existed as summaries of the personal and social experiences of the Oron people of Southeastern Nigeria - they embodied Oron spiritual beliefs and cultural history; hence, were vessels for the spirits of the dead that instilled great influence over the daily, religious, and social lives of the living. As an art form, Ekpu held the key to understanding Oron past tradition that was largely destroyed by colonial and Christian presence in Oron society. This book attempts to reconstruct the histories of Ekpu Oro figures and the Oron people through art historical analysis and ethno-historical reconstruction based. It will also be an experiment in methodology, relying substantially on collected oral testimony and interviews with Oron elders, diviners, and titled chiefs. Thus, this book focuses on the significance of Ekpu figures in Oron life, because of missionary presence, colonial punitive expeditions, and how Ekpu figures served to hold Oron collective memories of Oron people despite overwhelming social changes. This book contains 35 black and white photographs.

Pettit, Edward2001 0-7734-7555-9 348 pagesThe Anglo-Saxon Lacnunga is a miscellaneous collection of almost two hundred mainly herbal remedies, charms, and prayers found only in a mostly 10th-11th century manuscript in the British Library. The collection is written mainly in Old English and Latin, and includes a version of a remarkable 7th century Hiberno-Latin prayer known as the Lorica of Laidcenn; there are also corrupt passages in Old Irish, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. It is one of the oldest extant vernacular medical collections in Northern Europe. Study of it sheds light on the dissemination, understanding, and translation in Anglo-Saxon England of remedies from classical and classical-derived collections such as the Historia Naturalis of Pliny, the Medicina Plinii, and the Physica Plinii. The collection also includes a large number of ‘magical’ charms which offer a unique insight into native beliefs in elves, spirits, witches, and sentient plants. The collection is therefore of prime importance to the history of folk medicine in Europe.
This two-volume edition is the first to provide an accurate representation of the manuscript, edited and translated in the light of newly discovered source and analogous texts. It is also the first to include: a detailed discussion of the nature of the collection and its status in Anglo-Saxon England; discussions of the collection’s palaeography and codicology, sources, analogues, and language (with full glossaries of Old English and Old Irish words); an extensive commentary that takes into account a wealth of previous scholarship, and finds new solutions to old cruces; and a full bibliography, in addition to individual bibliographies for each of the collection’s Old English metrical charms.

Pettit, Edward2001 0-7734-7557-5 416 pagesThe Anglo-Saxon Lacnunga is a miscellaneous collection of almost two hundred mainly herbal remedies, charms, and prayers found only in a mostly 10th-11th century manuscript in the British Library. The collection is written mainly in Old English and Latin, and includes a version of a remarkable 7th century Hiberno-Latin prayer known as the Lorica of Laidcenn; there are also corrupt passages in Old Irish, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. It is one of the oldest extant vernacular medical collections in Northern Europe. Study of it sheds light on the dissemination, understanding, and translation in Anglo-Saxon England of remedies from classical and classical-derived collections such as the Historia Naturalis of Pliny, the Medicina Plinii, and the Physica Plinii. The collection also includes a large number of ‘magical’ charms which offer a unique insight into native beliefs in elves, spirits, witches, and sentient plants. The collection is therefore of prime importance to the history of folk medicine in Europe.
This two-volume edition is the first to provide an accurate representation of the manuscript, edited and translated in the light of newly discovered source and analogous texts. It is also the first to include: a detailed discussion of the nature of the collection and its status in Anglo-Saxon England; discussions of the collection’s palaeography and codicology, sources, analogues, and language (with full glossaries of Old English and Old Irish words); an extensive commentary that takes into account a wealth of previous scholarship, and finds new solutions to old cruces; and a full bibliography, in addition to individual bibliographies for each of the collection’s Old English metrical charms.

Matateyou, Emmanuel1997 0-7734-8514-7 272 pagesUnlike other publications on folklore, this book illuminates for the reader the complex and rich performance contexts of the oral narratives in Subsaharan Africa. The study of the narrator, narrative pattern, audience interaction, and details about language, setting, date and time of the performance of each tale is very important and helps to recreate the atmosphere of live performance. Though translated into English, the author has made an effort to give to the oral narratives an indigenous flavor. The tales are divided into categories, such as origin stories, stories about men and women, trickster cycles. Strongly recommended for Africanists, educationists, those interested in women's studies and the question of cultural identity, sociologists, literary critics, and students and teachers of African literature.

Oldfield, Anna C.2008 0-7734-4990-6 276 pagesThis work examines women ashiqs and their poetry, contextualizing their lives and works within discussions of the history, music, poetics, and social importance of the ashiq in Azerbaijan. Theoretical concerns addressed include the interplay of oral and written literature, discourse of national and transnational identities, dynamics of cooperation and resistance in the Soviet Union, the interplay of tradition and innovation in folklore, and gender roles in Azerbaijani society. This book contains sixteen black and white photographs and twelve color photographs.

Morrissey, Ted2013 0-7734-4464-5 192 pagesOpens a new line of inquiry into the Old English poem, specifically trauma theory, which attempts to map the psychological typography of an author and his or her culture, that is, when the text appears to be wrought of traumatic experience.
Indicators of a “trauma text” are narrative techniques often associated with postmodernism--expressly, intertextuality, repetition, a dispersed or fragmented voice, and a search for powerful language. The anonymous Beowulf poet made extensive use of all four narrative techniques, suggesting he and his culture were suffering some sort of traumatic stress. The author brings together knowledge from myriad disciplines, among them history, anthropology, sociology, biology, psychology, with special emphases on the branches of psychoanalysis and neuropsychology--and focuses his trauma-theory reading on the poem's original language.

Knappert, Jan1999 0-7734-7544-3 356 pagesThis book of African fables gives examples of the interplay of animals and human beings in the folk tale. The aspects of behavior of the animals represents the character of a human being. These tales are those specifically for children, and can be classified on the basis of their purpose, e.g. whether they are for young chiefs, girls, or ‘underdogs’. A long introduction puts the work into literary and historical context.

Maine, Carolyn2004 0-7734-3574-3 64 pagesFascinating are the tales of the bravery and heartiness of the women of Old Cape Cod. Many were descendants of the original pilgrims, but much courage was still required of women, usually very young, who dared set out on a sea journey from the old country to the new, whether persons of means or indentured servants; and once there, to live much of the time with their men away at sea, perhaps never to return. These poems try to recreate the daily struggles and hardships of these women, but also their joys and levity, in such a manner as may have been expressed in 18th century New England.

Nance, Kimberly2004 0-7734-6401-8 174 pagesThis work is a critical examination of pre-testimonial engaged writing in late twentieth century Latin America that has been long overdue, not only to help flesh out the literary history of the region, but to help historicize what came after. As a Cervantine satire of indigenismo, Paulo de Carvalho-Neto’s 1972 novel offers an excellent start. As demonstrated in the first section of this study, not only is Mi tío Atahualpa a capacious and critical overview of a genre that dominated the Andes for decades, the novel is also a virtual recapitulation of Latin American literary history, incorporating genres that range from the crónica and folktale through social and magical realisms, and even certain elements of the nueva narrativa. Drawing on a background in the discipline of folklore studies as well as Latin American literature, the second part of this study examines the role of orality and folk syncretism in Mi tío Atahualpa, as a means of inverting the indigenista norms of blanco as observer and indio as object of observation. A final section compares Carvalho-Neto’s literary responses to the cultural challenges of his time with those of two contemporary novelists who were also responding to the unfinished business of indigenismo, José María Arguedas and Manuel Scorza; and with the limit-case of the nueva narrativa, Julio Cortázar’s Rayuela. As a narrative critique, Carvalho-Neto’s novel sheds light not only on indigenismo, but also on the crisis faced by Latin American narrative in the period of transition that followed the Boom.

Chishty-Mujahid, Nadya Q.2006 0-7734-5679-1 256 pagesFocuses on how a series of major characters in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene; enhances a reader’s appreciation of the epic’s complex topical allegory and its moral implications. These specific techniques of character development include composition, fragmentation, and metamorphosis.

Butcher, Beverly J.2010 0-7734-3624-3 492 pagesThis work demonstrates that the ultimate creation and performance of the ancestor memorial liturgy by the Catholic Church is the practical realization of the ideal to renew attempts at worldwide inculturation as set forth during Vatican II. This book contains twelve color photograhs.

Hart, Cyril2010 0-7734-3729-0 236 pagesThis medieval history captures the narrative of England's formation from an Anglo-Saxon settlement into a kingdom. At the center of this is the life of Alfred the Great.

Hart, Cyril2010 0-7734-3731-2 420 pagesThis medieval history captures the narrative of England's formation from an Anglo-Saxon settlement into a kingdom. At the center of this is the life of Alfred the Great.

The present research is the first attempt ever made at a systematic analysis of classical Chinese supernatural fiction known as zhiguai under the morphological framework designed by Vladimir Propp (1928) and later developed by Alan Dundes (1964). Zhiguai has long been a focus of Chinese studies, but the studies have been generally confined either to exploration into the geographical-historical sources of zhiguai tales or to the recognition and reconstruction of society in ancient China through zhiguai literature. A systematic study of this genre from a structural-functional perspective will shed light on the rules governing the textual organisation of classical Chinese fiction of the supernatural and strange. While the focus of this work is on a synchronic presentation of textual features and structural patterns of zhiguai fiction, a general review of zhiguai literature is conducted before a morphological analysis is made of this genre. The main purpose for this diachronic exploration is to complement the synchronic analysis of tale texts so as to present a panoramic view of classical Chinese fiction of the supernatural and strange.

Boire, Paula2002 0-7734-7254-1 380 pagesThis massive four-volume work is an overview of the development of the art song in Romania. Interviews were conducted with composers or their surviving family members. Includes songs of each composer. It will be a valuable resource for professional singers, voice teachers, students, pianists, musicologists interested in art song, and scholars of Eastern European cultures.

Boire, Paula2002 0-7734-7256-8 348 pagesThis massive four-volume work is an overview of the development of the art song in Romania. Interviews were conducted with composers or their surviving family members. Includes songs of each composer. It will be a valuable resource for professional singers, voice teachers, students, pianists, musicologists interested in art song, and scholars of Eastern European cultures.

Boire, Paula2002 0-7734-7258-4 468 pagesThis massive four-volume work is an overview of the development of the art song in Romania. Interviews were conducted with composers or their surviving family members. Includes songs of each composer. It will be a valuable resource for professional singers, voice teachers, students, pianists, musicologists interested in art song, and scholars of Eastern European cultures.

Boire, Paula2002 0-7734-7260-6 248 pagesThis massive four-volume work is an overview of the development of the art song in Romania. Interviews were conducted with composers or their surviving family members. Includes songs of each composer. It will be a valuable resource for professional singers, voice teachers, students, pianists, musicologists interested in art song, and scholars of Eastern European cultures.

Ogembo, Justus M.2006 0-7734-5722-4 220 pagesThis book is about a spate of witch-killings that has been underway in Gusii, southwestern Kenya, since 1992. It integrates the testimony of participants of and witnesses to the incidents of witch-killing with other ethnographic and socioeconomic information in order to understand what led to the sudden rise of this violence in November 1992 and its rapid decline in July 1994.

The book brings into the literature on witchcraft an analysis of the interface between the global and the local that is at the crux of individual experience. The significance of this book lies in its contribution to our understanding of how, in this era of globalization, the forces of the free market that are set into motion in one part of the world are experienced and interpreted in another as the workings of the supernatural.

By focusing on collective violence, the book sheds light on our understanding of human aggression and is therefore of interest to many fields including sociology, anthropology, political science, social psychology, philosophy, and religion.

Roy, Diane Carole2014 0-7734-4285-5 360 pagesA highly original look at Australian multiculturalism through the exploration of the significance of a Slovak traditional music and dance performance in Melbourne employing three methodologies; Goffman’s analysis of interactional behavior, Conversation Analysis, and statistical survey techniques which unified the Foucauldian theoretical framework of the data giving the findings added cogency.

Cerghedean, Gabriela2006 0-7734-5536-1 276 pagesExplores the fascinating topic of dreams in Spanish medieval literature. It focuses on three interrelated aspects: the prevalent theories developed by different schools of thought from Antiquity to late Middle Ages, the Spanish treatises, and the legal and catechist documents regarding dreams as presented by influential authors.

McCully, Robert1991 0-88946-498-7 102 pagesTakes up where Heinrich Zimmer left off in The King and the Corpse, in which Zimmer takes the position that the ancient symbolic tales and scripts cannot be pinned to a particular theory, as they are in Bettelheim's Freudian approach or in Marie von Franz's Jungian analysis. Examines six well-known fairy tales, listening for the many-faceted intimations common to all enduring art forms. Considers fairy tales as retold dreams, nets that catch hidden psychological realities embedded in the folk-soul, common to any age or time.

Magnússon, Gísli2014 0-7734-4287-1 260 pagesFor the first time, the true scope and relevance into the esoteric and occult aspects of Rilke’s work is made available, to his many English-speaking readers. Dr. Magnússon reveals an alternative interpretation by focusing on Rilke’s fascination with occultism, spiritualism and parapsychology as it plays out in his work, tapping into the culturally intrinsic nature of the work, in order to lead the reader to a deeper understanding of this widely read poet.

McClean, Stuart2006 0-7734-5667-8 284 pagesThis book fills a notable gap in the burgeoning literature on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in Western societies. Despite the increased focus on CAM in the social and health sciences, scant attention has been given over to exploring the rise of therapies on the extreme fringe of complementary medicine, such as ‘crystal’ and ‘spiritual healing.’ This book re-dresses the balance and presents an ethnographic picture that takes into account more ‘marginal’ therapeutic modalities in the UK, although, more importantly, this book shows how the study of the marginal gives way to particular insights about the mainstream, such as orthodox biomedicine. Primarily, the book explores the use and practice of ‘esoteric’ healing practices in a Centre for healing in Northern England, and what they represent in the context of the changing role, status, and legitimacy of complementary medicine in the UK and Western societies more generally.

Conventional socio-scientific wisdom suggests that esoteric healing is counter-cultural, in that its emergence is illustrative of ‘New Age’ ideology. The author argues, contrary to this position, that in healing there is a tension. There is a tension between the personalization that healing practices exhibit, and the striving for orthodoxy, both with the Centre itself, and also among the wider healing community. Thus, even apparently esoteric forms of complementary medicine are influenced by the language of science and medicine. This book highlights examples of this mimicry of medicine, and points to a range of explanations for this contemporary social phenomenon. In particular, this book throws into question the conventional biomedicine/CAM boundary and offers some insight into the common metaphorical basis of medicine and healing, and the continued social and cultural influence of biomedicine in Western societies. The book makes a key contribution to the social and health sciences body of knowledge on CAM by exploring its resurgence in the context of wider debates on modernity and postmodernity.

Maxwell-Stuart, Peter2016 1-4955-0444-1 245 pagesHerodotos’ reputation as the teller of tall stories has undergone revision over the years. In India, he said,
there were ants almost as large as dogs. The story was repeated many times by Greek authors and then
by Roman, Byzantine, Arab, and Persian writers, before finding its way into Mediaeval and early
Renaissance European literature. Attempts to rationalise the tale have centred upon the ants themselves.
By the mid-twentieth century the puzzle appeared to be regarded as settled. However, based on studies of the etymology of various languages spoke in those area, and on anthropological investigations the book offers a new explanation of Herodotos’s story based on historical context rather than fantasy.

Thomas, J.W.1999 0-7734-8202-4 124 pagesThe thirteenth-century poet who used the pseudonym Der Stricker ("The Knitter) is the earliest known composer of fables, sermonettes, and parables – examples of Kleindichtung –in the German language. Some of the Stricker's fables and parables are, as far as is known, original with him, others are new variants of works that had appeared in other lands and languages. The sermonettes are typical examples of what might be called the folk-theology of the day, drawing on oral tradition rather than directly on the Scriptures. In his verse-tales, the author proves to be a keen, often harsh social critic providing a realistic, often cynical, picture of medieval society that stands in sharp contrast to the romanticism of nearly all German literature of his century. This is the first collection of The Stricker's short narratives in English translation.

Manson, Cynrhia DeMarcus2008 0-7734-5102-1 168 pagesDespite growing scholarly recognition of subversive social and political content in Victorian fairy tales, their significance in relation to the oft-cited Victorian “spiritual crisis” remains largely unexplored. This interdisciplinary study addresses the critical gap by examining three literary revisions of Sleeping Beauty from the early 1860s as pointed efforts to enter the intensified religious debate following the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species. This book contains two color photographs.

Neimann, Theresa D.2015 0-7734-4267-7 348 pagesThis a feminist interdisciplinary examination of the divine imagery and its connection to sexual justice, investigating the use of the word Zöe, Greek for “life”. A feminist hermeneutics using varying methodologies is utilized to empower women’s autonomy. The book examines the Greek Septuagint, the Nag Hammadi Scriptures, the Kabbalah, Hebrew and other scriptural sources to argue that Zöe can serve to provide multiple feminine images of God: Lady Wisdom, Mother God, Fountain of Life, Tree of Life, and Restorer.

Halpert, Herbert2010 0-7734-1323-5 680 pagesThis annotated collection presents a unique corpus of over 400 traditional tales, collected by North America’s most distinguished scholar of Folk Studies. It includes anecdotes, historical and aetiological tales, legends (including the tales of the Jersey Devil), and tall tales. This book contains thirteen black and white photographs.

Ma, Wei2001 0-7734-7675-X 260 pagesThis volume contains folklore selections written first in the Salar written system, the same selection rendered in the International Phonetic Alphabet, followed by an English translation. This is the first time such an extensive collection of Salar literature has been written in the Salar’s own writing system and it is the first anthology of the folklore translated into English with Salar and IPA counterparts. The preface was written by the West’s leading Salar scholar. This is a must for all Chinese, Islam, folklore, and minority collections. With Illustrations

Graham Anderson2007 0-7734-5372-5 280 pagesFor over a century, research in Ancient Fiction has concentrated on the literary aspects of the texts available to us. Ancient novels had their roots traced to a number of literary genres, including Epic, Euripidean Romantic drama, and New Comedy. The studies collected in this work look instead at the relationship between formal fiction and popular storytelling. Connections between these two forms of literature were prevalent in various cultures in antiquity, and also reemerged in the significant quantities of folk- and fairy-tales from the Renaissance onwards.

Tolesa, Addisu1999 0-7734-8193-1 232 pagesA study of Geerarsa, a type of folksong of Ethiopia's Oromo people, who reside in Oromia and Ethiopia as well as in diaspora in the West. In exploring their verbal art it attempts to address the social base and political scope of Oromo folklore. It presents Geerarsa as an important part of the Oromo's values, attitudes, and history as they have struggled, and continue to struggle, against colonial oppression and win back their cultural and national identity.

Grooms, Chris1993 0-7734-9368-9 428 pagesA collection and discussion of the literary, place-name and archaeological materials concerning giants in Wales and the Marches, the text includes three basic registers: 1) tales and materials about place-names containing Welsh cawr or cewri, or English giant; 2) tales and materials for place-names with associated giant traditions; 3) tales and material associated with personal names of giants. The preface includes a discussion of the linguistic, inscriptional and literary materials of Gaulish cavar and a description of the Welsh materials. There is also a new text and translation of Sion Dafydd Rhys's 34 folio chapter on giants from his 16th-century prose defence of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia. National Grid and Cantref/Shire cross-indexes to all primary and secondary place-names in the study have been provided, and a Stith Thompson motif-index for Welsh giants. There is also an additional appendix to the Gaulish materials, and a full list of abbreviations, bibliography, and index.

Cronin, Patrick2010 0-7734-3657-X 436 pagesThis book, the only one of its kind in the English language, examines the attempts of the Greeks to predict weather change by means of naked-eye observation of celestial phenomena, unaided by scientific meteorology.

Nemeth, David2002 0-7734-7217-7 312 pagesThis study contributes to scholarship in several innovative ways. It is an ethnogeography, a regional ethnography, that focuses on an ambiguously-defined ethnic group in the United States – Rom Gypsies – whose survival strategies and stratagems appear to center ideally on the secrecy and mobility of its members. Gypsy scholars are continually frustrated in their search for truth because Gypsies, specially in America, remain ill-defined, incommensurable and impossible to map with any accuracy. The near absence of Gypsy-American landscapes and associated culture regions presents a challenge to traditional ethnography. This book contributes an unprecedented scholarly investigation of a Gypsy-American inscape as an alternative approach to the landscape study. The inscape is a vital activity space that produces and reproduces a Gypsy-American ethnos. The study focuses primarily on the activities of Thomas Nicholas, a self-ascribed Rom Gypsy-American, and his family, and offers extraordinary insight into the Gypsy-American ethnos. The book also addresses complex issues in Gypsy studies social science scholarship, provides a critique of its mission and accomplishments, and offers a unique window into the lives of some typical Gypsy scholars whose relentless pursuit of Gypsies involves considerable personal and professional risks.

Aylett, Robert1995 0-7734-1344-8 240 pagesAn old tale is brought to life again in this study which traces the English reception history of Fortunatus (editio princeps: Augsburg, 1509). Drawing on his private collection and his international research, Blamires discusses treatments ranging from the Right Pleasant and Variable Tragical Historie of 1640 to the modern reprint of Andrew Lang's Grey Fairy Book. His narrative embraces the many little-known publications, and is supported by the first attempted bibliography of Fortunatus in English and the complete texts of four key versions.

Dominguez, Diana V.2010 0-7734-3649-9 320 pagesMedb of Connacht, a central female character of medieval Ireland's Ulster Cycle is read traditionally as an example of a misogynistic, patriarchal Christian campaign to suppress and silence women in early Ireland, or as symbolic of a primordial, mythic pre-Christian goddess, exempt from patriarchal censure because her behavior is ascribed to her duties as a divine sovereignty figure. In addition, this work provides the first comparative and comprehensive character analysis of the Connacht warrior queen across numerous tales in which she appears as a major player, presenting a more complete picture of her character across the tales than has previously been offered. Such an approach also allows for a reading of Medb as a literary reflection of the socio-political tensions present in the historical period during which the texts emerged, and perhaps as a reflection of historical women who helped to produce those tensions in their societies, including gender-related tensions every bit as complex and complicated as our own are today.

Prioreschi, Plinio1990 0-88946-142-2 504 pagesThis book examines death from a biological and historical point of view, and its impact on human thinking. The problems of unexplained death, the criteria of death, and its meaning in the light of the Second Law of Thermodynamics are discussed. The answers given by philosophy and the sociological aspects of the phenomena related to the care of the terminally ill, to mercy killing, to suicide and to the death penalty, are also investigated. The thesis supported is that the fear of death is the motivation behind our need to accomplish anything (be it having children or getting the Nobel Prize) that will allow us to survive death. The primary cause of most of our actions in fact, are traced to our desire to achieve some form of immortality. The fear of death is considered to be life’s main energy source. In sum, the book finds that fear of death is the motive behind the human need to accomplish anything at all and discusses care of the terminally ill, mercy killing, suicide, and the death penalty.

Whyte, James2002 0-7734-7018-2 296 pagesFor this study of the fiction of Irish writer McGahern, one of the prominent writers to follow the generation of James Joyce, White (Presentation College, UK) talked extensively with McGahern and studied all of his published novels and short stories. White finds a variety of themes in McGahern's work, including a sense of social fragmentation, the role of ritual in sustaining the hope of transformation, and the hierarchical structure of the family. Running throughout McGahern's work is the hope for a possibility of transcendence to an ideal world.

Loewen, Gregory V.2007 0-7734-5508-6 252 pagesWhy do people, in our modern age of rationality, science, and materialism, commence the formation and celebration of the irrational, the unscientific, and the immaterial? What anxieties drive us to escape the cold light of the empirical? What desires are left unfulfilled by the premises and promises of technocracy and market capital? What beliefs are unbelievable, and what do we wish to avoid remembering at the cost of forgetting the history of ourselves? This book explores these questions with a combination of analyses of structures which impose themselves upon our thinking and create for us templates of prejudice and spaces of judgment, and a variety of qualitative case studies taken from many of the somewhat occlusive and tricky fjords of human experience.

Ali. Munir Muztaba2009 0-7734-4706-7 212 pagesThis work investigates folk tales and their significance to childhood development. The author examines how the folk tale addresses basic needs of children, their depiction of life, and what their resolutions reveal about the problems children encounter as they mature. This book contains five color photographs.

Mukuna, Kazadi wa2003 0-7734-6690-8 274 pagesThis interdisciplinary study sheds light on the communal creative process of music and discusses the process of music change in Bumba-meu-Boi, and provides an example of exo-semantic analysis in the quest for the truth of this folk drama. It argues that Bumba-meu-Boi, sheds light on 18th century Brazil, and reveals existing levels of interaction between classes (master-slave, oppressor-oppressed) on sugar can plantations and mills. A sociologist perspective demonstrates that the structure of the Bumba-meu-Boi reflects a similar network of relations as they exist in communities where it is performed. The study contains a glossary, comprehensive bibliography, and a reproduction of the entire play.

Owusu-Ansah, David1991 0-7734-9726-9 268 pagesA study of the three bundles of Arabic Manuscripts from the Guinea Coast found in 1963 at the Royal Library in Copenhagen. The first part focuses on the examination of the instructions for making charms and amulets. The second part reviews factors that explain the popularity of Muslim charms in Asante. Pays particular attention to specific historical events in Asante from 1804 to 1867.

Rouse, Marilyn2000 0-7734-7650-4 332 pagesThis first in-depth study of the entire genre of Jamaican folk music illustrates the effect that acculturation has had. It contains nearly 200 musical examples, the majority of which are Jamaican, with some British and West African to illustrate comparative points made in the text. It is the largest comprehensive collection of Jamaican folk music covering all categories of the genre. An appraisal of the multifarious races which constitute the population of Jamaica enable comparisons to be made between the music contained in each of the categories with the ethnic musics of the peoples who make up the population. The study disagrees with several previously accepted prognoses, which were based on small samples in individual genres. In addition to the ethnic analysis, this study includes the categories of play, work, and religion.

Gagnon, Mireille2008 0-7734-5112-9 176 pagesThis study is a first in depth look at a contemporary witchcraft, known as Wicca, in the francophone province of Quebec in Canada. Taking an ethnographic approach and placing itself within the context of two different languages and world, views this study evaluates the Wiccan experience in Quebec, arguing that this particular group claims a religious rather than spiritual relation with the world.

Santana, Richard W.2006 0-7734-5862-X 260 pagesExplores the persistent power of word-magic and sacramental thought in English literature. The multi-disciplinary approach combines philosophical inquiry with the history of ideas and close critical analysis of three major, representative literary texts: play texts from the Corpus Christi Cycle, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Matos-Nin, Ingrid E.2010 0-7734-3718-5 172 pagesThis work examines some of the sources that María de Zayas uses to present some of her concepts about the devil, evil, men, honor and love in relationship to the supernatural. Contrary to some modern critics, the Spanish people of the Seventeenth century were very much aware of the significance, customs, and relevance of these supernatural beliefs in their lives.

Metting, Fred2006 0-7734-5840-9 300 pagesArthel “Doc” Watson, an 82-year-old musician from North Carolina, is one of the two or three most important acoustic guitarists in American musical history. The story of Watson’s music is a rich and complex narrative which involves the listener in an exploration of the music of the Scottish settlers in the Appalachian Mountains and the changes in that music as the mountaineers were influenced by the African American music of itinerant laborers in the nineteenth century and by sounds from records and radio early in the twentieth century. Despite Watson’s importance to American acoustic music and despite the richness of the story of his music, a full study of his music has not been realized until now. This book explores the musical culture of Watson’s immediate family (the hymns of Watson’s church, the ballads and fiddle tunes of his immediate family, and the music of his mountain home) as well as the extended aural world that came to the mountains through records and radio when Watson was a young boy. Finally this study explores Watson’s important contributions to the folk revival of the 1960s when he helped change the role of the acoustic guitar in American music. This work will be important to students of American music and folk culture.

Urban, Misty2010 0-7734-3776-2 300 pagesThis study treats the appearance of the monstrous woman in Middle English romance narratives as a self-conscious literary trope that reflects on, and often criticizes, the grounds of philosophical, cultural, and narrative discourse that place women both inside and outside medieval culture, constructing them as Other by biological and social difference yet relying on them for the reproduction and healthy maintenance of the male-governed social order.
Building on current monster theory and adding to research on medieval women in literature, this study reclaims the Middle English romance as a sophisticated literary strategy that, in its narrative reflexivity—and its use of a fictionalized thirdspace—reveals how medieval rhetoric essentially makes women into monsters.

Kim, Dal-Yong2009 0-7734-3780-0 288 pagesThis study argues that esoteric ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and James Frazer provide answers to ontological questions about the origin and substance of poets looking beyond the established rationalist codes of the industrial society.
The ideas also give comprehensive critical insight into creative bases on which the poets’ various mystical or occult ideas work to produce their distinct creative characters.

Hegy, Pierre1991 0-7734-9680-7 236 pagesKnowledge, business, politics, defense, etc, would be impossible on a national scale without the inner horizon of common values. This horizon helps us to locate ourselves within the limits of what is knowable, feasible, and permissible; it allows us to set goals and priorities, and to find hope and direction. Values are rooted in myth, defined here as that which is said, as in Homer, but also as the inner rationality of our everyday discourse.

Ringel, Faye1995 0-7734-9047-7 272 pagesThis comprehensive comparative approach to the folklore, fantasy, and horror literature of New England stretches from the earliest European exploration to Stephen King, John Updike, and Shirley Jackson. Along the way it examines the Puritan witch trials as examined by Hawthorne, Arthur Miller, H.P. Lovecraft, and others; folk tales of the Windham Frogs and ghost ships; Hawthorne in Salem, Poe in Providence; the flowering of spiritualism and mysticism from 1848-1900; the New England Vampire Belief in reality and fiction from Mary Wilkins Freeman and H.P. Lovecraft to Stephen King; to the present day - King, Charles Grant, Peter Straub, Rich Hautala, Richard Matheson, Shirley Jackson. Includes interviews with Les Daniels, Grant, and other horror writers who reside or set their stories in New England.

Sciannameo, Franco2005 0-7734-6099-3 108 pagesFederico Fellini entered the pantheon of 20th-Century artists for his path-breaking films like, La dolce vita (1960) and Otto e mezzo (1963). However, it was with Amarcord (1973), that Fellini achieved universal fame. That celebration of youth and memory transcends all barriers of ethnic origin and national belonging by simply appealing to human commonalities. Similarly, Nino Rota’s music, an integral part of this film, eludes cultural boundaries by blending learned and popular musical styles – as in a folk-opera in which stories or episodes are expressed through song and dance representative of everyday life. By juxtaposing music and images, their own creative personae and their youth as it relates to our collective memories, Fellini and Rota made this film about “remembering youth” an unforgettable experience for generations of viewers and listeners. This monograph is of interest to scholars of music, cinema, and cultural studies.

Crane, Bo1992 0-7734-9869-9 232 pagesExplores the pre-Christian religious background of European peoples to see why they received christianity more readily than did the peoples of the Mid-East where it originated. The query results in a wonderful quest to Babylon, the Black Sea, to St. Athanasius and Attila the Hun, and of course, through the Bible itself in tracing its references. Examines the personae of the gods, the Old Testament, the time of Christ, and the spreading of the gospel.

Tolstoy, Nikolai2009 0-7734-4710-5 592 pagesEstablishes the chronology and provenance of the early mediæval tales known today as the Four Branches of the Mabinogi. Although they have been justly described as ‘fundamentally the stories of the old Brittonic gods from whom the leading Welsh dynasties claimed descent’, which makes their principal subject-matter archaic and in principle timeless, Tolstoy shows that often seemingly incongruous and contradictory passages reflect details of historical events in Britain and Ireland during the first two decades of the eleventh century.

Herbenick, Raymond2000 0-7734-7738-1 164 pagesThis monograph supports and advances the revolutionary views of Celtic scholar David R. Howlett. This work discusses points such as the compositional skill level of the historical St. Patrick and the thematic level of understanding in his use of a pentagonal structure of the Pentateuch, as well as the five collections of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of St. Matthew on which he likely modeled the thematic structure of his Confession according to Howlett. This monograph demonstrates that the historical St. Patrick might well be considered not only as a first-rate Biblical theologian but as a wise monastic spiritual director versed in moral and pastoral theology.

Yovino-Young, Marjorie1993 0-7734-9307-7 140 pagesThis study challenges the prevailing claim that there is no connection between ritual and the Russian folktale. It reveals the author's discovery of two primary magic spell forms found in pagan ceremonies and folk literature. These binary and trinary invocation forms appear in a number of variations and contain basic rhythmic elements found in primitive music and folk songs. They are similar to those found on verbal and incident levels in 20 Russian magic tales. Their basic rhythmic elements are compared to like phenomena noted in the Russian language verbal aspect system, and to primitive music. In addition to the binary/trinary ritual forms, embedded patterns of ancient rituals have been delineated in "Shabarsha" and "By Pike's Command," two well-known Russian tales. Superimposed on these ritual patterns are yet other patterns of mythic images, revealing new insights into the mental world of those who created these tales of wonder.

dos Santos, Dominique Vieira Coelho2013 0-7734-4552-8 316 pagesSeveral books dedicated to the life and career of Saint Patrick seem not to take narrative problems into consideration or at least not to focus on them. The main subject in this particular field is the real or historical Patrick, in contrast to the fictional. The authors of these works try to overcome the gap between referent and representation, transcending then in order to find a hidden meaning in the past. Part of the so-called Patrician problem is related to this need of being forced to choose between real and representation. Patrick’s history is analyzed differently in this research; we are more interested in understanding the representations than to transcend them.

Coulter, Page2004 0-7734-3576-X 80 pagesThe poems in this book arise from Page Coulter’s love for New England—its folklore, history, and natural environment. The poems celebrate a thirst for life, and life’s small victories found through a close observation of nature.

Damian, Carol and Steve Stein2005 0-7734-6217-1 164 pagesThis volume traces in text and photographs the life and work of Peruvian folk artist Nicario Jiménez Quispe. One of Latin America's most renowned and original practitioners of this art form, Jiménez combines peasant traditions of his birthplace high in Peru's Central Andes with a keen eye and searching mind to create unique works of social and political as well as aesthetic impact. Jiménez expresses himself artistically through the creation of retablos, wooden boxes with colorful, complex and moving three-dimensional scenes portraying a variety of subjects that range from the daily lives and rituals of the Andean peasant to the political and social violence that has swept his home country of Peru over the past two decades. In some of his more recent work, Jiménez has also focused on social, political and cultural phenomena in North America with retablos that depict the human rights struggle in the United States and the plight of Hispanic immigrant who travel to El Norte. Examples of Jiménez's works may be found in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian Institution, the International Folklore Museum in Santa Fe, the Folk Art Museum in San Francisco and the Museum of Man in San Diego. In addition to illustrations of Jimenez's most important works, this volume contains interviews with the artist and essays by historians, art historians and anthropologists specializing in Latin America that describe his fascinating life's journey from Andean peasant to successful artist as well as evaluating the significance of his art.

Hermansson, Casie2001 0-7734-7394-7 332 pagesThis study offers a new theory for feminist intertextuality based on strategies at work in rewritings of the Bluebeard fairy tale. The book asserts that feminist intertextuality revises one coercive intertext in particular: that of intertextuality theory itself. Rewritings of the fairy tale accordingly can be seen to privilege either the embedded narrative or the escape from it, subscribing either to monologic or dialogic intertextuality. The work examines the original Bluebeard tale group (Perrault, Grimm, variants); historical and modern Bluebeards; and then other writers, including Jane Austen, William Godwin, Margaret Atwood, John Fowles, Peter Ackroyd, Kurt Vonnegut, Angela Carter, Gloria Naylor, Emma Cave, Max Frisch, Stephen King, Méira Cook, and Donald Barthelme.

Jones, Thomas1995 0-7734-9027-2 188 pagesShows how the magical language and occult methods of the Italian Renaissance are the key to understanding the mysteries of the Shakespeare sonnets, both as a cycle and as individual poems. It explores how the influence of Giordano Bruno's Heroic Enthusiasms, Plato's Symposium, Trismegistus' Corpus Hermiticum, emblem books, and Italian "magic" in its various overlapping forms provided the foundation and content of Shakespeare's sonnets.

Gift Makwasha2010 0-7734-3682-0 432 pagesHistorical analysis of the evangelization of the Shona by both European missionaries and native evangelists examines the idea of a cross-cultural blending of Christianity and the Shona to create an Africanized Christianity. The author proposes a Christological approach where Jesus is seen as the ancestor par excellence in whom physical and spiritual needs are fulfilled.

Bakker, J.1991 0-7734-9713-7 283 pagesThe chapters in part one re-examine the impact of the mythic west on a selection of 19th century texts in the light of the latest literary-critical approaches to Western writing. Works include Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, Melville, Whitman, Twain, et al. The selection has been guided by the fact that all these works deal explicitly with the frontier West. Part two contains chapters on the modern Western. First, the literary Western from Owen Wister's The Virginian through E.L. Doctorow's Welcome to Hard Times. The second chapter discusses the popular or formula Western, concentrating on what links it to the literary Western: violence and the love story. Addresses such writers as Zane Grey and Max Brand. The third chapter is devoted entirely to Larry McMurtry's novels Lonesome Dove and Anything for Billy, examining in what sense and to what extent he succeeds in revitalizing the conventions and stereotypes on which the traditional popular Western is based.

Njoku, John1991 0-7734-9631-9 172 pagesThe short stories in this volume are original and deal entirely with the culture of the traditional people of Nigeria. They include folkloric tales that have never been written down. Some are expressed in idioms, proverbs, and slang. It offers a rich legacy of the Nigerian people's culture

Rusnock, K. Andrea2010 0-7734-3692-8 268 pagesThis book argues that Socialist Realist paintings, typically seen by western art historians as examples of retrograde art and by scholars of Soviet history simply as propaganda, were a part of an extensive program of skillful artistic practice coupled with masterful propaganda. This book contains fourteen color photographs.

Babcock, Michael2001 0-7734-7446-3 136 pagesAs a “world-historical” figure, Attila the Hun captured the imaginations of Roman imperial chroniclers and early Germanic epic poets alike. Specifically, the momentous event of Attila’s death was interpreted quite differently as it became incorporated into various Roman, Byzantine, and gothic narratives. Working within the tradition of narrative studies and drawing upon the ideas of historian Hayden White as well as structuralist/narrativist literary theory, this study explores and interprets the rich ideological contradictions surrounding the ‘stories’ of Attila’s death which circulated in the late classical and early medieval world.

Scheub, Harold2006 0-7734-5741-0 304 pagesThis is a study of two Zulu women, storytellers, one who performed stories in 1868, the other in 1972. Lydia umkaSethemba and Asilita Philisiwe Khumalo are two African women, one hundred years apart, both accomplished storytellers: their stories, in their similarities and variations, provide insights into the nature of stories and the evolving of stories from one generation to the next. At the core of their stories are identical structural underpinnings; the facade of those stories varies to the point that the narratives seem wholly unlike. Each of the women takes a traditional tale from the oral repertory, and, as storytellers have done from the beginning, organizes tradition as a context for the contemporary world. In each case, an ideal world is envisioned, for Lydia umkaSethemba a world of plenty, a realm distinct from the reality of her environs in the 1860s. For Asilita Philisiwe Khumalo, it is a world of freedom, an escape from the apartheid reality that characterized her country in the 1970s. The two raconteurs build their works around familiar swallowing monster stories, conventional movements into the heavens, seasoned tales dealing with transformation from one being to another. Each takes the familiar and makes it peculiarly her own.

Harwell, Thomas1997 0-7734-4208-1 172 pagesBased on original research and a series of interviews carried through from 1959 to 1965, this study, divided into four volumes, gives the first in-depth study of Rio Grande Valley Folklore in Texas, combining Hispanic and American elements. Lore 1 contains studies on the evil eye, shock, recetas and curanderos (healers and healing), ghosts, owl-lore, and weather. Many extracts from interviews are reproduced in detail, and full commentary, notes and bibliography are provided. Volume 2 will contain further studies of specific customs, while Vols. 3 and 4 will study the culture of the area in depth.

Nicolini, Beatrice2006 0-7734-5727-5 406 pagesMagical practices, witchcraft, and warfare in the African continent during the XIX and XX centuries offer interesting opportunities towards a better understanding not only of African societies, but most of all, of their historical role in numerous political and military conflicts and also within peace-building processes, which represent a continuation of a topic of long-standing concern in African history.

This collection extends the time period from the colonial to the post-colonial, but it also broadens the focus from invocations of the supernatural in military and political mobilization, to rituals of healing in post-conflict societies, the latter, until now, being a field more studied by anthropologists.

The majority of contributions are here analyzing cases from Sub-Saharan Africa, starting from West Africa, to Uganda, and concentrating on East Africa, mainly Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique, ending in Zimbabwe, and South Africa. From the historical, institutional and military points of view, African colonial history clashed against African magical practices and witchcraft, and, in many occasions, colonial authorities of the time did persecute major representatives of these practices, also with the use of force. The object of this volume is showing how practices of magic, and in some contributions also witchcraft, did reveal and still reveal today as very much useful instruments within political fights, sometimes with the object of violent oppositions and revolutions, sometimes with the object of status quo preservation processes. Another attractive feature of this collection of essays is the combination of young academics (who opened their research to future analysis) together with internationally well-established scholars such as Bernardi, Uzoigwe, Owusu, and Ranger. Terence Ranger is without question the leading historian of African employment of magic and of witchcraft eradication movements in modern Africa. The opportunity of filling a gap in this important subject is absolutely unique, and many scholars and researchers, as well as policy makers, will benefit of this effort.

Callary, Edward2006 0-7734-5544-2 296 pagesThis is a collection of essays selected with the purpose of presenting a picture of the concerns and state of onomastics in America in the closing decades of the 20th Century. Onomastics is the serious study of names and naming. Names are used in all cultures to designate particular persons, places, events, and ideas. This study helps show both universal aspects of human culture and differences between cultures over time and space. The study of names as used in America is relevant for investigating universal patterns and tendencies, as most places in America were named more recently than the older, earlier-settled parts of the world.

Sur, Carolyn1989 0-7734-9497-9 94 pagesHistorical survey includes a brief history of Germany's origin, early pioneers to America, and sections on German celebrations, dress, education, and the effects of inter-cultural transitions. Also contains a Selected Tree for Early (German) Families in Effingham County, and a Name Your Relative Chart.

Young, Barbara Ann2006 0-7734-5614-7 400 pagesThe Irish literary child has its nascence in earliest Celtic mythology and flourishes as an emblem of the Irish nation throughout Irish literature to the present day. This book concentrates on the development of this symbolic figure in twentieth century Irish poetry and prose and juxtaposes the figure of the literary child at any given point in the century with political and social conditions of Ireland at the time. The result of this pairing over the course of the century is the revelation of the paradigmatic nature of the child in Irish literature. As the nature of and challenges before this child evolve in literature, so does the nation of Ireland.

Smith, Gregg A2007 0-7734-5353-9 196 pagesExamines the nature and function of the dead in medieval Norse and Celtic literature. It is demonstrated that agents of the living dead in these literatures have a functional and formulaic role, largely manifested as a process of wish-fulfillment. While the authors of these stories provide resonances of past beliefs regarding the dead, they also appear to have adapted these ideas for their own purposes in order to involve the dead as role-players in their stories. This book contains 11 color photographs.

Greene, David B.2010 0-7734-1311-1 240 pagesThree types of Guatemalan art that represent imagines of community are presented here. The particular techniques and structure of each set of works project an imagining of community that is unique to those pieces. Studying the pieces together lays the groundwork for re-imagining the relation of arts and society.

Kamppinen, Matti2013 0-7734-4543-9 132 pagesLauri Honko (1932-2002), the Finnish professor of folkloristics and comparative religion was a prolific and multitalented researcher, whose topics of research ranged from the study of folk beliefs, folk medicine and Ingrian laments to the general theories of culture, identity and meaning. He studied Finno-Ugric mythologies, Karelian and Tanzanian folk healing, and South Indian oral traditions. In this book we aim at explicating and analyzing his methodological assumptions as well as his specific theoretical contributions in the study of religion and folklore. Our central focus is on Honko’s tradition ecology, an approach to cultural systems that exposes their dynamic and functionalistic features. We compare and contrast tradition ecology with other theories in religious studies and folkloristics, especially with those theories that stem from the evolutionary and cognitive paradigms. Furthermore, we will explicate Honko’s programmatic model of the folklore process, by means of which the dynamics of religions and folklore can be conceptually captured. We argue that Honko constructed a coherent theory of culture, where functionalism played a central role. Furthermore, we argue that in Honko’s theory, religious studies needs methodological support from folkloristics as well as from other fields of cultural studies.

Christaller, J.1990 0-88946-234-8 323 pagesA wealth of proverbs from the Twi-speaking people of Ghana, collected by Rev. J. G. Christaller circa 1879 and translated for the first time into English by Fr. Kofi Ron Lange, S.V.D.

Asihene, Emmanuel1997 0-7734-8466-3 432 pagesBesides enriching culture, folk-tales continue to fascinate both children and adults, providing inherent educational, moral, and ethical values. This volume presents a comprehensive collection of Ghanaian folk-tales which are as original as they are fascinating. The rich characterizations will provide ideas for dramatization as well as reading materials for children.

McDonald, William1990 0-88946-075-2 250 pagesPresents a fresh look at the German Tristan stories appearing after the Tristant of Eilhart von Oberge and the Tristan of Gottfried von Strassburg, focusing on the main representatives of the genre from 1235 to 1553. Stimulates a rethinking of the standards by which we measure the achievement of the German Tristan poets who wrote from the 13th century onward.

Anderson, Earl R.2010 0-7734-3755-X 608 pagesThis monograph is the first book-length comprehensive textual analysis of the Beowulf saga as an Indo-European epic. It provides a detailed reading of the epic in conjunction with ancient legal and cultural practices that allow for a new understanding of this classic work. This theoretical resource offers insights valuable to the fields of comparative mythology, medieval literature and Anglo-Saxon studies.

Bernhardt-House, Phillip A.2010 0-7734-3714-2 520 pagesThis book is a typological study of canids and canid imagery in Medieval Celtic cultures. It explores texts ranging from early Irish legal tracts and heroic narrative to exempla from Welsh, Breton, and later Scottish sources.

Bean, Heather2001 0-7734-7508-7 256 pagesBoth urban Appalachian evangelical Christianity, as embodied in Appalachian women’s folk art and music, and process theology as articulated by John B. Cobb, Jr, and those he has mentored share an existentialist eschatology that emphasizes the salvific quality of individual life in the present rather than hope in the future. Process theodicy lacks a rich aesthetic, symbolic or ritual tradition through which to express these beliefs and thus is often criticized for its seeming lack of applicability to Christian life and nurture. Urban Appalachian women’s folk art and music, however, is widely celebrated for its powerful emotional impact, but its multivalent symbolism is seldom explored for theological insight. This project explores the ways in which these two marginal Christian existential theological traditions share common beliefs, articulate them in radically different ways with radically different results, and thus might learn from one another.

Kohen, Elli2003 0-7734-6778-5 444 pagesThis unique book is structured by country, from prehistoric to present times. An effort has been made to revive the soul and ambience of different environments as it evolved over the centuries. The style is intentionally folksy, to reproduce the special sense of humor, puns or poetry of different countries.

Mvuyekure, Pierre-Damien2007 0-7734-5440-3 328 pagesThis book posits that Neo-HooDooism, an African Voodoo-derived aesthetic, evinces Ishmael Reed’s post-colonial transformation of the English language, colonialist discourses, and imperial cultural systems into discourses of self-empowerment and self-representation. As Reed’s return to ‘dark heathenism,” Neo-HooDooism represents an attempt to rediscover pre-slavery and pre-colonial African languages and oral traditions to remedy the impact of physical and linguistic displacement that African-Americans continue to experience in the United States. Reed’s nine novels are post-colonial writings whose production affects social, cultural, political, and historical contexts from African-American, American multi-ethnic, Caribbean, African, “Third-World,” and global perspectives. This book analyzes Neo-HooDooism as a post-colonial discourse/literary theory and a multi-cultural poetics through which Reed reconnects the African Diaspora to Africa within a global perspective. To accomplish this, an investigation is made into slavery, hegemony, language, place and displacement, race, gender, feminism, writing, post-coloniality, and theory as post-colonial themes that permeate Reed’s nine novels.